Yesss. Ace's burgeoning tradition of releasing exciting Spring Game footage of a hot new quarterback comes in two steps. Step 1: video. Step 2: video with Christopher Walken. This one even has the 97-yard touchdown inexplicably omitted from the first video:

The new Shazor. So… yeah, Donovan Warren did not get picked in the NFL draft this year, causing Maize 'n' Brew to dissect his decision. I'm all like "what the hell?" I don't think anyone thought Warren was going in the first round, but to fall out of the draft entirely is a Shazor-like collapse. It's actually worse. Shazor's fall was obvious in retrospect: the guy imploded over the second half of his junior season, failed drug tests, and got tagged with major character issues. All Warren did was run a couple of crappy 40s on gimpy ankles. I'm not sure if you can blame Warren when he was told he'd be a mid-round pick at worst. The advisory board did both Warren and Michigan a major disservice here.

Warren said in announcing his decision to turn pro Sunday that the committee gave him "a broad range, rounds 1 to 3."

"Rounds one to three" is way different than round one. Don't let those facts prevent you from getting your furrow on, yo. The actual facts are pretty damning in this case… why exaggerate?)

Exeunt Morris. Jamie Morris's departure from the athletic department hit the papers yesterday, drawing terse statements from the athletic department and no comment from the people who knew about this a week ago but decided not to tell you.

I don't want to air dirty laundry without cause, but Morris is being tossed around as THE MOLE or held up as a representation of Dave Brandon cleaning house against the Rodriguez resistance. So: Morris was dismissed as a result of some bad decisions about use of an athletic department car and a subsequent attempt to conceal those bad decisions. It doesn't have anything to do with Rodriguez.

If you think it's possible that someone could have skated for a similar offense under Martin (maybe) or Goss (definitely), this is an improvement. Personally, I'm waiting to hear exactly what happened with Michigan's CARA forms—and what happens to the people who failed to file them—before proclaiming the New Era of Accountability nigh.

Morris still plans to be on WTKA this fall with John U Bacon; his takes promise to get more interesting now that he's not employed by the AD.

Auburntron will be ours. Michigan's scoreboards are increasingly outdated in a world of advertising-plastered Godzilla-trons. I would like one Tron, sans advertising, please. Dave Brandon, what say you?

"The reality is those scoreboards are old. They're old technology and they're old."

This is a man who will bring crazy HD replay boards to Michigan stadium, all the better to see Armando Allen stepping out of bounds. The last thing on the hit list: video replay at Yost.

Somewhat thunderous. We have a final number on the effect of Michigan's boxes on the noise level. Somewhat oddly, it comes from an article on the noise level at Beaver Stadium:

A similar reflected-sound effect was measured at the University of Michigan stadium by architecture professor Mojtaba Navvab. He found that the recent addition of skyboxes there created a wall that reflected sound from lower seats onto the field. That meant an increase of 4 to 5 decibels in on-field noise.

DBs are logarithmic (and base ten) so a 4-5 decibel increase is actually something close to triple(!) the volume. Sort of. A fruitless journey through wikipedia indicates that loudness is a fuzzy concept and an increase in sound pressure does not have a one to one correspondence with the perceived loudness. Until such point as we can blow out the opposing quarterback's eardrums on a critical third down, perception is where it's at. As best I can figure, the luxury box-spurred increase is significant but not game-changing.

Implosion continues apace. Both Detroit papers got hammered over the past six months, with the News falling 10.1 percent and the Free Press 13.3, both considerably in excess of national averages. The web numbers are even more slanted towards the News:

Web traffic has been strong as well. Unique traffic to detnews.com increased 26.4 percent to 4.3 million readers in March compared with a year earlier. Unique visitors to freep.com increased 2.2 percent to 4.7 million, Harshbarger said.

Losing 13 percent of your circulation and gaining two percent on the web is a nasty blow. Extracting a moral from the story is an exercise left to the reader.

(Side note for Mitch Albom: "Uniques" are a wildly varying metric, but in case you're curious Quantcast's guesstimate as to the number of people who visit the Free Press monthly is about 1.3 million. This blog is currently at 10% of that.)

there's a psychological aspect of the acoustics issue - the feeling that the stadium is louder...which makes people more willing to be loud, which makes it louder, and so on. a live environment would seem to make people more lively, if that makes any sense. or i may be talking out of my ass.

there were a couple of times last season when the stadium was REALLY loud, though. due to the changes, or the Changes? time will tell.

Early in my professional career, I was a sound quality engineer. 6 dB is a doubling of the level (i.e. magnitude) of acoustic pressure, sound power, or sound intensity, (actually, on a log scale, its a doubling of anything). Acoustic pressure is measured in Pascals, (abbr. Pa) sound power in Watts (W) and sound intensity in Watts per sq. meter (W/m^2).

"Loudness" is something else, but is dependent upon the frequency content of the sound. There are different weighting curves and means to calculate it. One weighting curve, known as "dB(A)" is a weighting curve (on a log scale of sound pressure) that attempts to approximate how the ear hears sound. Most vibro-acoustics engineers have largely dismissed dB(A) as a good measure of perceived loudness (but its better than no weighting). Two other means are closer: Stevens loudness, and Zwicker loudness (ISO532A and B standards). Many studies have shown that the weighting curves in Zwicker loudness do a good job of approximating perceived loudness.

Depending upon the frequency content of the sound, 6-10 dB is a doubling of perceived loudness. 4-5 dB will certainly seem louder to most spectators in the stands, but it certainly won't be "triple" or even "double".

right. apparently the pricepoint of schoolcraft does come at a cost in quality.

howeva, you're right - frequency content will determine the perceived loudness, as well as the loudness level at which you start, given the fletcher-munson curve. especially if we're talking about low frequencies vs. mid-range.

The duration of the sound, and time-frequency characteristics, (that is, how the frequency content changes with time) also play a factor.

Sound quality was one of the really cool things I got to do early in my career. And the acoustic testing equipment (the Aachen Head, for example) was unbe-freakin-lievable. At $50K-$100K for a setup, however, it had damned well better be.

And don't be dissing on Schoolcraft. Chef Gabriel (head of the Culinary Arts department) is one of only a few, Certified Master Chefs in North America. I think he may be the only one in Michigan. The man is a genius in the kitchen.

i took a class in studio techniques for recording engineers last year. i believe the agreed upon ratio for dB SPL to human hearing is 6dB roughly equals twice as loud (perceived). it has to do with human hearing not being linear..

anyway, using that translation, the "loudness" is about 180% that of prior to the boxes. still quite significant.

Well... anyone who caught Jon Gruden demoralizing Jimmah Clausen will take note that the Big House was DAMN loud for the ND game. They used 3-4 (?) Time outs on offense due to the play clock, and had a few false starts. That's on the crowd.

I stopped frequenting the Freep site around the same time most everyone else here did. The Detroit News site is the only Michigan MSM site I visit. Brian (and many other sites) have rendered them irrelevant for Michigan sports coverage.

You just beat me to this... I was just happily reading along, then ran into that brick wall and logged in just to say something about it. I work in the theatre world when I'm not working in the banking world, so this jumped off the page at me. I'm a little surprised at Brian. He's not usually one to fall victim to trying to be more colorful and using words incorrectly in the process. Eh, give him a pass. He runs a helluva blog.

since the third person singular present tense active voice indicative mood ending for the fourth conjugation is -t and the third person plural present tense active voice indicative mood ending for the fourth conjugation is -nt.

Great pull on the perceived loudness. This is something that physiologists and physicists study quite a bit, actually. The concept is simple: there's a finite amount of data that nerve impulses can actually carry. At some point, a sensory input will become overloaded and the brain will see the same signal--whether by amplitude or frequency of nerve firing--from bright and brighter or loud and louder. To an extent, this is a safety mechanism.
This doesn't even get into attenuation. If you hear loud noises for an extended period of time... they won't sound loud anymore.

because I'm not at all surprised when I open up the comments and find comments about both acoustics (in technical detail!) and theater terminology. I don't know what Zwicker loudness is, and I'm not sure I really want to know...but it sounds cool.

I have been among the Tate fans, believing that ability to throw on time and on target is vital to success in this offense. I gained two things from the video, however, that will have me feeling very happy no matter which non-freshman starts this fall.

1 - Denard did a very nice job leading the bubble screen receiver, so that the receiver had to move forward to make the catch. It was awfully frustrating last fall to watch sideways passes get dropped, bobbled, or caught without the runner having a head of steam and getting tackled for minimal gain.

2 - Watching the d-line rush Denard was a lot like watching teams rush Dennis Dixon, Juice Williams, Pryor, or any other mobile quarterback. They seemed not to want to go all out so as not to create running lanes. This gave tons of extra time, so that being on time is less of a factor - in fact, it became a total non-factor. Granted, it was only a spring game against the twos, but I loved seeing Denard make use of extra time to find receivers downfield rather than immediately taking off.

I like the way Denard is playing - if he starts, that's great. If Tate elevates his game to the point that it's better than Denard's, that's great too.

Everyone knew Donovan left too early. Coach RR thought he left too early. His body of work did not culminate in to anything draftable. He could have benefited from his senior year. Agents are greedy opportunists, they could care less about any player.

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" --Alfred Lord Tennyson/ John Sheridan B5

Does anyone know what new information NFL teams could have evaluated that was different than what the experts projected?

I believe what RR said was, "I don't know why Warren didn't wait until his official evaluation". Clearly the head coach wants him back, but RR didn't say Warren made a mistake in deciding to go, just in making the decision without getting all the information, and information that is given freely before you lose your chance to change your mind.

But wasn't that official review that he would go in the 3-4 round, and many experts had said prior to that official review that they say him going in the 3rd round? I certainly don't remember anyone saying, "there's a chance he won't be drafted at all"

Now that he hasn't been drafted everyone is saying, "he definitely would have been drafted after his senior year". But that's making the assumption that he would have had an outstanding Senior Season.

I think it's entirely possible that he would have been the best corner next year, but I'm not sure that's something that would have meant he's an NFL corner.

I do remember that Warren was our best corner, but then again the other corner was a freshman. Also I remember Warren getting beat time to time by tall NFL looking wide receivers.

Then again, I don't get paid for assessing talent for the NFL. Clearly the people who do get paid decided he wasn't worth a draft pick.

Now that means to me either Warren didn't have the stuff, and should have at least gotten his college degree or,

He was a 3-4 rounder, but with no college degree what choice does he have? So maybe that leverage was used to pick him up for a practice squad for free, and wait and see what happens.

I think most of this commentary is based on, "Michigan desperately needs experienced corners" rather than, "Warren didn't have what it takes to be drafted and here's why".

Since no one stated that before he didn't get drafted, I greatly doubt Maize and Brew are really bringing and true analysis to the discussion.

It's very easy to watch people run through a mine field, then point to the ones blown to pieces and say, "I knew he shouldn't have tried it", but it doesn't really tell you anything about what it takes to successfully make it through the mine field.

I'm not sure it's completely fair to put most of the blame on the advisory board for Warren's draft flameout. I heard Todd McShay recently talking about a similar draft plummet from Jevan Snead, and he pointed out that as a Senior, scouts have 15 months to evaluate you, whereas if you come out as a surprise Junior, it's 3 months. (Yeah, I know, McShay's a draft leech, but his point stands on its own.)

And when you look at Warren's recent tape, well - maybe not so great. For instance, against the only NFL caliber QB and receivers he faced - ND - he was less than impressive. Maybe it was the constantly changing scheme, maybe it was coaching, maybe it was injuries, maybe it was him, but he was significantly less consistent than the other all big 10 corner, Iowa's Amari Spievey. Then factor in his slow 40 time and poor drill performance at the Combine. And finally, there isn't much in his game to suggest he'd be a special teams demon, which probably hurt him a lot when he fell to the later rounds where ST value is at a premium.

Put that all together, and I don't think you can say the advisory board is entirely or even primarily responsible for failing to project his draft position. Now, if the board gave him a prediction with a great deal more certainty than was warranted, that is on them - but also on his agent, and his other advisors, and him, for failing to understand the inherent uncertainty in early projections. Really, the immediate reaction when he said he was coming out was that he'd jumped the gun - and the immediate reaction was right. If he'd stayed, and become a senior stalwart defensive leader like BG, things might have been very different.

Good luck, Donovan, it's uphill from here but it's been done before and it'll be all the sweeter if you pull it off.

My point is that, I think he could just as easily not perform well against premium competition his senior year. Yes he would be on TV more and be mentioned as one of the returning seniors, but with my limited knowledge on what players do between Junior and Senior year, it's 50/50 in my mind that he would have turned that exposure into a contract.

Now the sensical thing is to state, "but he would have a degree", but sometimes players don't really want any old job you can get with a communications major degree.

And to me, that's what's important for defining, "he made the right decision", since it's based on what he wants to do.

And according to twitter, he's just like Mike Hart, and wants to prove them all wrong.

I agree about the ST issue - in the 5th and 6th round, teams might be leary about taking a chance on Warren if he cannot fill a number of spots. I somewhat buy the limited review time for scouts, but at the same time you always hear that scouts usually can figure out a kid based on a couple of videos, and with the abundance of youtube clips as well as Warren's exposure playing for UM, I doubt the scouts did not know who he was as a Junior. I do think the advisory panel dropped the ball here, moreso with Warren than Snead (who always sounded like he was leaving irrespective of what the draft experts told him). If the advisory pannel had told him than he was, at best, a 3rd rounder, my guess is that he would have at least reconsidered coming back.

Did you use THE GOOGLE to determine those numbers? How do they compare to the sales of "Tuesdays with Morrie," which I wrote -- along with many other best-sellers, as well as stories about sporting events, some of which I attended? How can I "visit" this thing you call a "blog" -- and what do I do when I get there? And, finally, who is this "Brian," and how can our fine Free Press investigative staff find out more about him?

Okay, so now Brian's blog gets a tenth of the traffic of the Freep. Let's push that number a little higher. Everyone peruse the blog from multiple computers- at the Apple Store, in Best Buy, on your phone, wherever you go*. Mitch and Drew Sharp need to be able to write about homelessness from firsthand perspective.

*You don't really think Tuesdays with Morrie is ranked #11,349 on Amazon due to honest sales, did you?